I discovered Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry 17 years ago, introduced to this self-proclaimed “wandering poet” by a young fellow poet who joined our nonprofit What Kids Can Do as a writer and editor in its early days. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Naomi Shihab Nye began composing her first poetry at the age of six. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, then moved to San Antonio, Texas, which has been her home eversince.

Naomi Shihab Nye has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry and spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Her poems have a singular focus: our shared humanity.

Nye’s long list of honors include awards from the International Poetry Forum, the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Pushcart Prizes, along with a host of fellowships. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Nye is the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate.

Struggling to keep my head above water in these sinking times, I recently turned to the “wandering poet” for ballast, mindful of her warning:

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, here is a shiny plate of my favorite Naomi Shihab Nye poems.

“Valentine for Ernest Mann” (1994)

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment 
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries 
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

“Kindness” (1980)

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking fo
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

“So Much Happiness” (1995)

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

“What She Said” (2021)

A woman on a plane said No!

We didn’t want your bombs 
and guns. We didn’t want them 
setting up camps
making secret plans
crisscrossing our mountains
dressed in combat gear.

Those helicopters scared us.

We wanted girls in school, yes,
freedom for women, always,
how can there not be freedom
for the source of life?
But more war, battles, 
years of dead villagers 
sprawled under 
pine nut trees, why?
Why not simpler things,
more schools,
larger hospitals,
food?

There would have been
Better things to do. 

“United” (2018)

When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.”  Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise?  How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”—
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?

“Famous” (1995)

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, 
which knew it would inherit the earth 
before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.  

The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Images:

“I Will Write You a Poem,” Yeongkyeong Lee
“Valentine for Ernest Man,” Blackout Poetry, Teachers Pay Teachers
“Kindness,” Public Health Consequences of Policing Homelessness, Matt Collamer
“So Much Happiness,” Promenade, Marc Chagall
“What She Said,” Terrible Days Ahead, The Guardian
“United,” CASHNET USA
“Famous,” Metal Pulley

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